Part 2 of “This is the World of Science Fiction and WorldCon?”

Okay, so in doing research to respond to some of the readers of my flash fiction story We Don’t Want Your Kind Here, I had to revisit my essay Who is a Nazi and Why Should I Care?. This led me to search the #WorldCon76 and #WorldCon2018 twitter hashtags for any mention of Nazis, which led me to this twitter conversation by Patrick S. Tomlinson (here’s one of his books on Amazon), and the screenshots below:

nazi1

twitter screenshot

nazi2

twitter screenshot

nazi3

twitter screenshot

Yeah, what a great guy, huh (However, if the allegation that the protesters deliberately were blocking access to a bloodmobile was true, I’d have a problem with it, too)?

I posted the link to the full thread above but here it is again (TLDR). I find it mind-boggling that people who consider themselves “the good guys,” leftists and progressives dedicated to protecting and promoting disadvantaged populations (among other things), can so easily turn around and express hostility and downright hatred, just because there are (gasp) other people on Earth who may disagree with their viewpoint.

Incidentally, as my “Nazis” article states, the people being accused of being Nazis are not actually Nazis. To find out why they were protesting, read Jon DelArroz’s blog post (and this guy is so unpopular, that just after he bought his ticket at WorldCon, he was personally ejected from the event).

I’ve read all of the criticisms against Mr. DelArroz, but usually the punishment comes after the crime, and merely buying a ticket isn’t a crime (okay, he did say he was going to videotape all of his interactions at the Con, but that was more for his protection, especially since another unpopular commentator was physically attacked at a Con).

Look, I get that there are extreme viewpoints at both ends of the spectrum, but those of us in the middle are caught in the crossfire. Yes, I’m conservative (but the word doesn’t have one hardcoded definition), and religious (same disclaimer), and male, white, old (past age 60), a Dad, a Grandpa, married to the same woman for over 35 years, live in Idaho, cisgender, straight, claim standard personal pronouns, you name it. Absolutely none of that makes me a Nazi.

And yet, I can only believe, if Mr. Tomlinson and his ilk had their way, my fictional story We Don’t Want Your Kind Here wouldn’t be fictional.

Oh, I have no idea if some of the reviews of Tomlinson’s book (I posted a link to it above) are fake, but as I write this, 40% of them are one star. Even if I knew Tomlinson and personally disliked him (right now, I just dislike how he characterizes people he disagrees with on twitter), I’d still write an honest review of his work (though I’m hardly motivated to add to this person’s income by purchasing a copy of his book).

I’ve heard it’s pretty hard to “game” Amazon reviews, but to be fair (because unlike some people, I actually try to be fair), here’s an article called How to spot fake Amazon reviews.

I really need to take a break from the twitteratti haters for my own peace of mind. That said, I’ll probably post a link to this blog post on twitter. I really dislike bullies, and in my opinion, Mr. Tomlinson qualifies for the role.

47 thoughts on “Part 2 of “This is the World of Science Fiction and WorldCon?”

  1. I’ve said before that I don’t know why you want to carry that guy’s water. I guess you’re having fun. But sticking up for that guy isn’t just about “somebody disagreeing with you.”

    Liked by 1 person

    • Even if you disagree with what Jon Del Arroz says and does, none of it makes him a Nazi, and comparing someone you don’t like to some of histories most notorious mass murders is irresponsible.

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  2. Even if he doesn’t fit an exact definition of Nazi (and I can’t verify that he doesn’t — but technically probably noone alive today can, so that works out), I wouldn’t want to get all worked up over a guy who hitches his cart to a pedophile apologist. The timing is pretty great, though.

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  3. Curious definition by Mr.Tomlinson that a Nazi is anyone who “shouts for ‘blood and soil’ “. While it’s true that those words represented a characteristic slogan of some of their values, which could be generalized as representing a combination of racism and nationalism, or more precisely, racism and jingoism, that does not mean they are definitive or equivalent to Nazism. Other folks might be nationalists but not racists, or vice versa, and not be Nazis because there are other values also that characterized the Nazis but are absent from anyone at WorldCon. Indeed, there may be folks somewhere in the present day who are both racists and nationalists who also are not Nazis for lack of other defining characteristics. Nonetheless, I would be surprised to find anyone at a scifi convention shouting such a slogan; though if they were to do it anywhere, I suppose outside a blood bank might be somehow significant. But did any such thing actually happen? Is that what Mr.Tominson is reporting and decrying? Oddly, the only protest sign even partially visible in the photo in his twitter screenshot above seems to decry pedophilia. I see no evidence of anything regarding blood, soil, bullying, violence, skinheads, jackboots, or anything else relating to either racism or Nazism. Surely he wasn’t referring to the security guards?

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    • Wouldn’t it be offensive, or at least insulting, to suggest that an escort was needed to protect someone from a non-existent threat? It represents a false accusation, a gratuitous slander. That sounds to me rather like an offensive aggression against someone’s reputation.

      Liked by 1 person

      • Oddly, the only protest sign even partially visible in the photo in his twitter screenshot above seems to decry pedophilia. I see no evidence of anything regarding blood, soil, bullying, violence, skinheads, jackboots, or ….

        The guy has set himself up for suspicion. Sexual assault may not always draw blood, but it is violence.

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      • Umm, which guy has set himself up for suspicion? Where’s the threat of sexual assault? The only assault I see is Tomlinson’s verbal aggression against a few protestors he slanders as Nazis, when nothing in evidence at the convention suggested that anyone engaged in any actual neo-Nazi behavior, or white supremacy sloganeering, or any threats at all — except those on twitter that James has been decrying here. I am, of course, relying on James’ interest in the convention to have followed closely what did or did not actually occur there, which I presume he would have included and addressed in his essays here. My interest is limited to what has been discussed here, without any deeper research into the broader range of hijinks that may or may not have occurred at this event.

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  4. What I find somewhat disturbing is that this exaggerated misuse of references to Hitler or Nazism actually devalues those terms and what they really represented. It obfuscates both the subtle and the overt expressions of evil in Nazism and the Holocaust it perpetrated, as described in Hannah Arendt’s 1963 book “Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil”. Among its lessons is the mind-numbing effect of slogans, catch-phrases, and similar expressions that are repeated mantra-like in place of actually formulating rational coherent creative thoughts which might, heaven forfend, have to explain or defend whatever the slogan was about.

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    • They might be saying “blood and soil” is an identifier as shorthand because, for instance, the neo-nazis in Charlottesville said those words and additionally said things like “Jews will not replace us.”

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      • We know that Patrick Tomlinson used the phrase. We have no idea if it was being said by the protesters at the venue or if it had ever been said by any one of them previously.

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    • James, your link to “She Did Nazi That Coming” seemed not to work, and the link to the author’s facebook page was unrevealing.

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    • Now, that’s a clever pun for what she, the author of whom Dei Cas cited a FB post, did not see coming — which is to say that her perception seems rather limited regarding the history of scifi and the criticism that she brings upon herself by her ignorant use of the term as a meaningless but emotion-laden pejorative.

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  5. Some people are aware of the connections of various personalities behind the scenes. The fact that you are not aware of the connections doesn’t make the people who do know the connections wrong. Maybe they should communicate better or more thoroughly (and perhaps they assume mistakenly that you also are aware). But perhaps you should be more careful yourself. Like I said, I’m not gonna cry over a pedophile apologist being called a nazi.

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  6. Wow. I don’t trust that guy, so it could be bull crap. Sorta like the pizza-gate thing. And maybe to cover for himself and other “conservatives” — as if church people aren’t in the news for a big giant decades and centuries long pedophilia racket. Anyway, where I got my information was from reading HIS OWN ARTICLE a month or so ago. Of course he didn’t say “I’m for pedophilia.” He called a pedophilia apologist “normal.”

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    • This is vague and imprecise.

      “I don’t trust that guy” What guy? James mentions more that one “guy”.
      “HIS OWN ARTICLE ” What article?
      “He called a pedophilia apologist “normal.” What he and who was this He talking about?

      Clarification is requested.

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      • I don’t trust Arroz, Wyldkat. And I was referring to an article by Arroz that James linked to some time ago. He’s (James has) included some links in the last few days that I think go back to that (but I’m not sure James is fully aware of what’s in them). I can’t explain further right now, heading out the door. (Just a little further clarification: I haven’t gotten any information on “pizzagate” or church pedophilia from James’ links.)

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      • I’m not asking James. I am asking you. You only answered one of my questions.

        What article? One of Jon’s? Which one, please provide a link. I need to see for myself. I do not formulate opinions based on someone else’s opinions, comments.

        Who is this alleged apologist? Everything I have seen from Jon and James is strongly anti-pedophilia.

        This country’s Judicial system is based on the precept of innocent until proven guilty, by a preponderance of evidence. Hearsay and innuendo are insufficient.

        I see posts from Jon in one of my groups. IMO, Jon is a lightening rod. He seems to thrive on the attention, same as about a dozen other people I have run across in the past 3 years. I give all of them the same level of attention … zero. Far as I’m concerned, this Patrick deserves the same attention. ((He wants to call people “Nazi” who are not remotely Nazi and then claim that is means something different than it did in 1933. Which reminds me too much of certain lies that were spread a couple of years ago.))

        On a slight tangent:
        I do know for a fact that some of the more liberal elements in the SF Fandom world have said things about friends of mine that are not true (eg, Lies and slander). I have also seen things said by the alt-right elements that are equally as damning of them. [the Alt-Right] (Although I do not have the empirical evidence that I have with my friends) Both “radical” sides have gone too far and are in the process of running off people like me.

        Attacking people, like James here, who are trying to offer a sane voice, only further drives people like me, and our wallets, away. (I have seen the evidence of the attacks.)

        ###
        Sorry for hijacking your page James. I’m just (once again) reaching my threshold for imprecision and vague innuendo

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      • If you are so rude as to not notice I replied to you politely ((kat)) — when I was in a hurry (2:42 yesterday) and leaving the house — and if you are so impolite as to not count on more than one finger, and if you are so lazy or daft as to not go read for yourself the articles linked to by James (with whom I had been conversing) and find any by Arroz (or Jon if you prefer), as I did say [I don’t trust Jon/Arroz and Jon wrote the article], that’s on you. And what an irrelevant comment you put forward about the legal system; I’m not the legal system, I’m a human who can decide whether someone is trustworthy to me or not.

        Here is a quote [no-one is hiding it from you] via an Arroz article (a full paragraph):
        Twitter has been under fire constantly for their attacks on conservative activists. Starting with banning Milo Yiannopoulos, Twitter has slid to where it appears identity is more important than the actual content of what is said. Twitter’s shadow-banning of conservatives that Project Veritas exposed only furthers the perception that Twitter has an agenda, and that agenda is silencing normal thought to push extremist politics.

        https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/milo-yiannopoulos-on-pedophilia-and-this-arbitrary_us_58ab52a5e4b029c1d1f88d77
        This is not the first time Milo has spoken of the joys of pedophilia.
        02/20/2017 03:56 pm ET Updated Feb 20, 2017
        ….

        Schlapp has booked Yiannopoulos to speak at the upcoming Conservative Political Action Conference, better know as CPAC. Yiannopoulos got higher billing, and more speaking time, than Vice President Mike Pence, Texas Senator Ted Cruz, former presidential candidate Carly Fiorina and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, and media personalities Sean Hannity and Lou Dobbs.

        Schlapp was getting criticism for the invitation even before the Milo pedophilia video emerged. On Sunday he responded, “We think free speech includes hearing Milo’s important perspective. #CPAC2017” When Milo’s critics did not back down, Schlapp tweeted again, “I think it is amazing that with all leftwing hate on campus you attack him.”

        The Milo pedophilia video may have changed that calculus, as conservative pundits raced to denounce him. Jamie Weinstein of The Daily Caller tweeted, “Do the Democrats even need to produce ads in 2018? Just run Milo’s pro-pederasty clips and tie them to all Repubs who attended CPAC.” Christian radio personality Steve Deace tweeted, “If you mention Jesus in your bio but are defending Milo, please tell us where you go to church so the rest of us know not to go there.” {I, Marleen, added the boldface.}

        Here is Milo from the video:

        We get hung up on this child abuse stuff… This is one of the reasons why I hate the left, the one size fits all policing of culture, this arbitrary and oppressive idea of consent.

        I’m grateful for Father Michael [a Catholic priest Milo claims to have had sex with as a teenager]. I wouldn’t give nearly such good head if it wasn’t for him.

        Pedophilia is not a sexual attraction to somebody who is 13 years old and sexually mature. Pedophilia is attraction to children who have not reached puberty, who do not have functioning sex organs yet, who have not gone through puberty.

        In the gay world, some of the most important enriching, and incredibly life-affirming, important, shaping relationships are between younger boys and older men. They can be hugely positive experiences very often for those young boys.

        This is one of the reasons Milo hates the left? Because the left doesn’t understand the merits of sexual relations between adult men and 13-year-old boys? And this from the mouth of a gay man who, in all his speeches, refers to Trump as “daddy.”

        One of the most difficult things to understand about the whole Milo phenomenon has been how a bitchy gay queen like Milo can sashay his way into right-wing superstardom while greeting conservative audiences with a big “Hello Faggots!” and relentelssly carrying on about all the black dick …

        ………. [This article goes on quite significantly.]
        {When I tried to connect to the YouTube and Twitter posts of the video(s) today (while I have seen them myself long ago), they did not function. I can’t control that for you ((Wyld)).}

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      • When You put forth the accusation this became a room in The Court of Public Opinion. According to established rules of legal proceedings, it is the burden of the prosecution/accuser to prove guilt – by providing evidence. It is not the responsibility of the jury to look it up for them selves. Since I was now a Jurist in the Court of Public Opinion – I asked you – as de-facto voice of the Prosecution – to provide the evidence so that I could do proper due diligence. ((Now that I know who and what you are talking, [honestly, providing the 5W’s does help] I can read and formulate my own opinion.))

        Yes, you are entitled to formulate your own opinion, as am I and everyone else. However, you just said that you didn’t trust him, you didn’t offer why until I pressed the matter. That makes this ex-cop curious.

        I’m not being rude, I am merely holding you to the same standards I hold myself. I’m sorry if you were offended, but your initial statement was vague and imprecise. Your response gave no indication that you would give more details later (ie, I can’t give a full response now, I’ll get back to you later) thus still vague.

        Citing the legal system is not irrelevant. In fact, just the opposite; if more people would insist on proper due diligence, demanding proof beyond a reasonable doubt, not just suspicion or feelings (or the seriousness of the charges – Gah, I hate that phrase.) there would be a lot less vitriol in the ‘net. If people would use more logic and less emotion … well, that will never happen.

        Everyone, you, me, James, Jon, MZB, even Milo, deserve to be given the Right of presumption of innocence until proven guilty.

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      • I guess this is supposed to be funny. A set of headlines — designed to sway public opinion — about people being supposedly ridiculous because they don’t love hearing what agitators like Jon and Milo have to say. But, hold up… maybe there is a response. And the response is what brought it all up.

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      • Here’s the not funny part of the whole thing (not about you, necessarily, Wyld): it won’t matter that real evidence was demonstrated (as spelled out a few posts above). It’s all about “identity” as defined by these people. They call themselves conservative (their ID); therefore, droves will fervently defend them

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      • Unfortunately, you are probably correct. Too many people are more in to Identity Politics – on both sides – and will like or hate someone just because they are [insert label here].

        That is why I try very hard not to label anyone; not to assume that because someone is [insert label] they are right/wrong, good/bad. That is why I want, insist on, evidence. Reviewing evidence, employing logic, has stopped several knee-jerk reactions.

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      • I think what bothers me about the whole “us vs. them” is that it implies there are only two perspectives. I don’t believe that’s true. From my years of experience in religious blogging (different blog), I can attest that even people with roughly the same theological beliefs can argue vehemently with each other. People, and their beliefs, are nuanced and subtle. When I was “debating” Patrick Tomlinson on twitter, he said he was also a conservative, but in reviewing his twitter feed, he’s very anti-Trump (and a lot of people are) and pro-Hillary Clinton. I know a fair number of conservatives who aren’t fond of Trump, but they tend not to be Clinton supporters. All that said, Tomlinson and I can both consider ourselves conservatives, but what that means for each of us is probably very different.

        With some restrictions (alt-right/racists, violent antifa leftists), I’m willing to have a civil conversation with just about anyone. That doesn’t mean I’m going to always agree with their viewpoints, but in a diverse world, it’s ridiculous to assume people will always agree, and if they disagree then they’re evil.

        As far as extremes vs. those of us somewhere in-between, I cobbled together an image recently to depict that:

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      • * (See below.) I say not only “thanks” to protests but due to the thrill many conservatives get out of being hateful. It would be nice if conservatives didn’t see things as picking a side in that way. But the label is just a cover, it’s apparent to me that it never meant anything to be conservative — although it did to me. (If it did mean anything, the true agenda was hidden and I was naive. I’m catching on.)

        The following is from the same article on Milo and his “dangerous faggot” bus above.

        ………

        Now, thanks to “black block” anarchists who shut down his events at UC Davis and Berkeley, Milo is playing to bigger stages like CPAC. Conservatives[*] are starting to actually listen to him, instead of just basking in the glow of his free speech battles with the left.

        The deeper question here is how all of this went as far as it did before the contradictions exploded. Which leads us into the bizarre world of gay men, Trump, and the alt-right.

        It is well-known, for example, that billionaire internet entrepreneur Peter Thiel was the first openly gay man to address a Republican convention, [he] did so to endorse Trump, for which he received a rousing ovation. …

        Less known is the fact that Andrew Breitbart worked for years “universalizing the conservative message in such a fashion that is audible enough to the gay community to break down the sound barrier created by the organized left.” In January 2011, Breitbart joined the board of far-right gay political group GOProud (now defunct). The next month, GOProud organized Trump’s first speech at CPAC, which launched Trump’s career as a Republican. Breitbart died suddenly in 2012 and Stephen K. Bannon took over, brought Yiannopoulos on board, took over the stumbling Trump campaign and rode it into the White House.

        Thiel and Yiannopoulos have been arguing that, now that gay marriage is legal and gays can serve in the military, gays should move into the conservative camp … [against] Islam. (Note that I use the term “gays” rather than LGBT because, as far as I can see, the queer alt-right is mostly, though not entirely, gay men.)

        Both Thiel and Yiannopoulos are immigrants from Europe, where there is no tradition of Christian social conservatism, where gay rights are far more secure than in the US, and where gay men have been elected to public office on far right platforms. I have watched their rise in the US right, surprised at how far they have been able to go without significant blowback from the social conservatives. Are those culture wars really over? Huh?

        College campuses have been confronting the Milo mess almost alone in recent weeks. Time to give the Christian conservatives their turn. …

        ….

        ……

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      • https://www.inc.com/jeff-bercovici/peter-thiel-live-forever.html
        …..

        In the “grief cycle” model theorized by the psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, denial is the first of five stages individuals experience when reckoning with death, and acceptance is the last. Thiel believes what we all need is a lot more of stage two, anger. “I’d like the fighting stage to be really long,” he says.

        In addition to the personal, emotional reasons for accepting [the natural fact of human, especially his] death, there are also some logical arguments for it. Death serves many purposes, including population control … Were it to recede sharply, overpopulation … could become acutely worse.

        [Check out some of the argumentation there.]

        Anti-immigration is part of his utopian fever fight against death.

        https://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/13/peter-thiel/education-libertarian
        I remain committed to the faith of my teenage years: to authentic human freedom as a precondition for the highest good. I stand against confiscatory taxes, totalitarian collectives, and the ideology of the inevitability of the death of every individual. For all these reasons, I still call myself “libertarian.”

        But I must confess that over the last two decades, I have changed radically on the question of how to achieve these goals. Most importantly, I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible. By tracing out the development of my thinking, I hope to frame some of the challenges faced by all classical liberals today.

        ……….

        [In here, he laments the fact women gained access to voting.]

        https://www.wsj.com/articles/peter-thiel-competition-is-for-losers-1410535536
        THE SATURDAY ESSAY Competition Is for Losers
        If you want to create and capture lasting value,
        look to build a monopoly, writes Peter Thiel By Peter Thiel
        ……

        Monopolies are a good thing for society, venture capitalist Peter Thiel argues in an essay …

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      • And how did we get from scifi to Peter Thiel? I see that you’ve mentioned him previously, but did anyone else? Was he among the twitter-pated tweeters that James cited? Does he write scifi? Did the “sad puppies” cite his writings or opinions at any time? I glanced at the article in your first link, and I can envision him as the representative of a dystopian regime and the subject of a scifi story. He seems to refer to himself as a libertarian, but certainly he’s a radical of some sort and the antithesis of an American political or social conservative (which, I must note, is quite different from a European “conservative” because very, very different values are in view to be conserved).

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      • Well, we knew it would happen, Wyldkat [that’s someone who posted earlier, PL, if you’re reading this but didn’t read that]; it’s always frustrating, though.

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  7. 95-year-old former Nazi guard deported from U.S. to Germany – NowThis

    A side note. I thought something like this could be out there still.

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    • Now that I’ve finally read the ABC News article you were referencing, I should like to point out that the real former Nazis who hid their wartime involvement in order to enter the USA as “displaced persons” have maintained a very low profile in order to avoid that association and the resulting deportation and trial. They have steered clear of the neo-Nazis and the white supremacists who have invented a new ideology and anti-social movement decorated with Nazi symbols and a few of its notions. The former Nazis, at least in the USA, are actually not guilty of abetting the neo-Nazi movement. I can’t say the same for how this new movement has been fostered in Europe, with the help, perhaps, of modern Hitler partisans such as the Holocaust-denier David Irving. Nonetheless, the former actual Nazis are at this point as aged as their surviving Jewish victims, and are no longer perpetrating anything like Nazi ideology and certainly not Nazi acts. Consequently one might wonder if the so-called neo-Nazis are really a revival of the same phenomenon as the original, or if they ought really to be called by another name and criticized for their own hatreds, falsehoods, and atrocities rather than those of the original Nazis.

      Liked by 1 person

  8. Quick reminder: Thiel (catering to doms and naives) was inside the Republican National Convention on stage, prime time. And Yianoppoulos was a main draw/speaker in a party (at the RNC) appealing to what he [and Pam Geller] called “twinks” (the counterpart to doms in that sort of milieu).

    https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/14/andrew-breitbart-cpac-conservative-activist_n_1276366.html“
    Quotation: The irony is rich… ….

    “I don’t write about the heterosexuality — I don’t out congressmen,” he said, then shifting back to closeted gay officials. “If a person is married and he has a secret life, that’s how he wants to live his life.”

    Breitbart even defended former Idaho GOP Senator Larry Craig — not on breaking the law by having sex in a public bathroom (he [says he] thinks that [breaking the law] should have been exposed) but by voting anti-gay while secretly having sex with men.

    ………….

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  9. {Further clarification for those who don’t know that homosexual people don’t have to be doms and twinks: this approach is a hearkening back to worse days when shame and harm are how it works; ties in well with child abuse. Also weaves together with expectations of women that enable their husbands to go screw around. Some people see all that as negative, while others would see it as making the culture great again.

    I saw a “conservative” react in surprise to a person identifying as a liberal indicating a person wouldn’t want to bend over in the shower in prison and inadvertently chance a homosexual situation. Homosexuality doesn’t have to involve rape and denigration. It doesn’t even have to involve a loser and a dom. And it sure doesn’t need to be all about men getting whatever they want and women being controlled.}

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